Two (proper) colorings of a graph are adjacent if they differ on exactly one vertex. Jerrum proved that any $(d + 2)$-coloring of any d-degenerate graph can be transformed into any other via a sequence of adjacent colorings. A result of Bonamy et al. ensures that a shortest transformation can have a quadratic length even for $d = 1$. Bousquet and Perarnau proved that a linear transformation exists for between $(2d + 2)$-colorings. It is open to determine if this bound can be reduced. In this note, we prove that it can be reduced for graphs of treewidth 2, which are 2-degenerate. There exists a linear transformation between 5-colorings. It completes the picture for graphs of treewidth 2 since there exist graphs of treewidth 2 such a linear transformation between 4-colorings does not exist.
Let $k$ be an integer. Two vertex $k$-colorings of a graph are \emph{adjacent} if they differ on exactly one vertex. A graph is \emph{$k$-mixing} if any proper $k$-coloring can be transformed into any other through a sequence of adjacent proper $k$-colorings. Any graph is $(tw+2)$-mixing, where $tw$ is the treewidth of the graph (Cereceda 2006). We prove that the shortest sequence between any two $(tw+2)$-colorings is at most quadratic, a problem left open in Bonamy et al. (2012). Jerrum proved that any graph is $k$-mixing if $k$ is at least the maximum degree plus two. We improve Jerrum's bou…
In this paper, we show that for every graph of maximum average degree bounded away from $d$, any $(d+1)$-coloring can be transformed into any other one within a polynomial number of vertex recolorings so that, at each step, the current coloring is proper. In particular, it implies that we can transform any $8$-coloring of a planar graph into any other $8$-coloring with a polynomial number of recolorings. These results give some evidence on a conjecture of Cereceda, van den Heuvel and Johnson which asserts that any $(d+2)$ coloring of a $d$-degenerate graph can be transformed into any other one…
In 1964 Vizing proved that starting from any k-edge-coloring of a graph G one can reach, using only Kempe swaps, a ($Δ$ + 1)-edge-coloring of G where $Δ$ is the maximum degree of G. One year later he conjectured that one can also reach a $Δ$-edge-coloring of G if there exists one. Bonamy et. al proved that the conjecture is true for the case of triangle-free graphs. In this paper we prove the conjecture for all graphs.
Let $k$ be an integer. Two vertex $k$-colorings of a graph are \emph{adjacent} if they differ on exactly one vertex. A graph is \emph{$k$-mixing} if any proper $k$-coloring can be transformed into any other through a sequence of adjacent proper $k$-colorings. Jerrum proved that any graph is $k$-mixing if $k$ is at least the maximum degree plus two. We first improve Jerrum's bound using the grundy number, which is the worst number of colors in a greedy coloring. Any graph is $(tw+2)$-mixing, where $tw$ is the treewidth of the graph (Cereceda 2006). We prove that the shortest sequence between an…
In this paper we study the problem of coloring a unit interval graph which changes dynamically. In our model the unit intervals are added or removed one at the time, and have to be colored immediately, so that no two overlapping intervals share the same color. After each update only a limited number of intervals is allowed to be recolored. The limit on the number of recolorings per update is called the recourse budget. In this paper we show, that if the graph remains $k$-colorable at all times, and the updates consist of insertions only, then we can achieve the amortized recourse budget of $O(…
A coloring of the vertices of a connected graph is convex if each color class induces a connected subgraph. We address the convex recoloring (CR) problem defined as follows. Given a graph $G$ and a coloring of its vertices, recolor a minimum number of vertices of $G$ so that the resulting coloring is convex. This problem, known to be NP-hard even on paths, was firstly motivated by applications on perfect phylogenies. In this work, we study CR on general graphs from a polyhedral point of view. First, we introduce a full-dimensional polytope based on the idea of connected subgraphs, and present …
A list assignment $L$ of a graph $G$ is a function that assigns to every vertex $v$ of $G$ a set $L(v)$ of colors. A proper coloring $α$ of $G$ is called an $L$-coloring of $G$ if $α(v)\in L(v)$ for every $v\in V(G)$. For a list assignment $L$ of $G$, the $L$-recoloring graph $\mathcal{G}(G,L)$ of $G$ is a graph whose vertices correspond to the $L$-colorings of $G$ and two vertices of $\mathcal{G}(G,L)$ are adjacent if their corresponding $L$-colorings differ at exactly one vertex of $G$. A $d$-face in a plane graph is a face of length $d$. Dvořák and Feghali conjectured for a planar graph $G$…
We prove that if every subgraph of a graph $G$ has a balanced separation of order at most $a$ then $G$ has treewidth at most $15a$. This establishes a linear dependence between the treewidth and the separation number.
We show that many graphs with bounded treewidth can be described as subgraphs of the strong product of a graph with smaller treewidth and a bounded-size complete graph. To this end, define the "underlying treewidth" of a graph class $\mathcal{G}$ to be the minimum non-negative integer $c$ such that, for some function $f$, for every graph ${G \in \mathcal{G}}$ there is a graph $H$ with ${\text{tw}(H) \leq c}$ such that $G$ is isomorphic to a subgraph of ${H \boxtimes K_{f(\text{tw}(G))}}$. We introduce disjointed coverings of graphs and show they determine the underlying treewidth of any graph …
The following theorem is proved: For all $k$-connected graphs $G$ and $H$ each with at least $n$ vertices, the treewidth of the cartesian product of $G$ and $H$ is at least $k(n -2k+2)-1$. For $n\gg k$ this lower bound is asymptotically tight for particular graphs $G$ and $H$. This theorem generalises a well known result about the treewidth of planar grid graphs.
In this paper we give a simple polynomial-time algorithm to exactly count the number of Euler Tours (ETs) of any Eulerian graph of bounded treewidth. The problems of counting ETs are known to be #P-complete for general graphs (Brightwell and Winkler, (Brightwell and Winkler, 2005). To date, no polynomial-time algorithm for counting Euler tours of any class of graphs is known except for the very special case of series-parallel graphs (which have treewidth 2).
For a fixed graph H, the H-Recoloring problem asks whether for two given homomorphisms from a graph G to H, we can transform one into the other by changing the image of a single vertex of G in each step and maintaining a homomorphism from G to H throughout. We extend an algorithm of Wrochna for H-Recoloring where H is a square-free loopless undirected graph to the more general setting of directed graphs. We obtain a polynomial-time algorithm for H-Recoloring in this setting whenever H is a loopless digraph that does not contain a 4-cycle of algebraic girth zero and whenever H is a reflexive di…
A graph $G$ is Ramsey for a graph $H$ if every 2-colouring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. We consider the following question: if $H$ has bounded treewidth, is there a `sparse' graph $G$ that is Ramsey for $H$? Two notions of sparsity are considered. Firstly, we show that if the maximum degree and treewidth of $H$ are bounded, then there is a graph $G$ with $O(|V(H)|)$ edges that is Ramsey for $H$. This was previously only known for the smaller class of graphs $H$ with bounded bandwidth. On the other hand, we prove that the treewidth of a graph $G$ that is Ramsey for …
Tuza (1981) conjectured that the size $τ(G)$ of a minimum set of edges that intersects every triangle of a graph $G$ is at most twice the size $ν(G)$ of a maximum set of edge-disjoint triangles of $G$. In this paper we present three results regarding Tuza's Conjecture. We verify it for graphs with treewidth at most $6$; we show that $τ(G)\leq \frac{3}{2}\,ν(G)$ for every planar triangulation $G$ different from $K_4$; and that $τ(G)\leq\frac{9}{5}\,ν(G) + \frac{1}{5}$ if $G$ is a maximal graph with treewidth 3. Our first result strengthens a result of Tuza, implying that $τ(G) \leq 2\,ν(G)$ for…
Let $k$ and $d$ be such that $k \ge d+2$. Consider two $k$-colorings of a $d$-degenerate graph $G$. Can we transform one into the other by recoloring one vertex at each step while maintaining a proper coloring at any step? Cereceda et al. answered that question in the affirmative, and exhibited a recolouring sequence of exponential length. If $k=d+2$, we know that there exists graphs for which a quadratic number of recolorings is needed. And when $k=2d+2$, there always exists a linear transformation. In this paper, we prove that, as long as $k \ge d+4$, there exists a transformation of length …
We study the minimum size $f$ of a feedback vertex set in directed and undirected $n$-vertex graphs of given degeneracy or treewidth. In the undirected setting the bound $\frac{k-1}{k+1}n$ is known to be tight for graphs with bounded treewidth $k$ or bounded odd degeneracy $k$. We show that neither of the easy upper and lower bounds $\frac{k-1}{k+1}n$ and $\frac{k}{k+2}n$ can be exact for the case of even degeneracy. More precisely, for even degeneracy $k$ we prove that $f < \frac{k}{k+2}n$ and for every $ε>0$, there exists a $k$-degenerate graph for which $f\geq \frac{3k-2}{3k+4}n -ε$. For di…
The product dimension of a graph G is defined as the minimum natural number l such that G is an induced subgraph of a direct product of l complete graphs. In this paper we study the product dimension of forests, bounded treewidth graphs and k-degenerate graphs. We show that every forest on n vertices has a product dimension at most 1.441logn+3. This improves the best known upper bound of 3logn for the same due to Poljak and Pultr. The technique used in arriving at the above bound is extended and combined with a result on existence of orthogonal Latin squares to show that every graph on n verti…
We prove that for every graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, the treewidth of $G$ plus the treewidth of the complement of $G$ is at least $n-2$. This bound is tight.
We investigate relations between different width parameters of graphs, in particular balanced separator number, treewidth, and cycle rank. Our main result states that a graph with balanced separator number k has treewidth at least k but cycle rank at most k(1 + log (n/k)), thus refining the previously known bounds, as stated by Robertson and Seymour (1986) and by Bodlaender et al. (1995). Furthermore, we show that the improved bounds are best possible.
Dujmović, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood [J. ACM 2020] proved that for every planar graph $G$ there is a graph $H$ with treewidth at most 8 and a path $P$ such that $G\subseteq H\boxtimes P$. We improve this result by replacing "treewidth at most 8" by "simple treewidth at most 6".
A queue layout of a graph $G$ consists of a vertex ordering of $G$ and a partition of the edges into so-called queues such that no two edges in the same queue nest, i.e., have their endpoints ordered in an ABBA-pattern. Continuing the research on local ordered covering numbers, we introduce the local queue number of a graph $G$ as the minimum $\ell$ such that $G$ admits a queue layout with each vertex having incident edges in no more than $\ell$ queues. Similarly to the local page number [Merker, Ueckerdt, GD'19], the local queue number is closely related to the graph's density and can be arbi…
A path (resp. cycle) decomposition of a graph $G$ is a set of edge-disjoint paths (resp. cycles) of $G$ that covers the edge set of $G$. Gallai (1966) conjectured that every graph on $n$ vertices admits a path decomposition of size at most $\lfloor (n+1)/2\rfloor$, and Hajós (1968) conjectured that every Eulerian graph on $n$ vertices admits a cycle decomposition of size at most $\lfloor (n-1)/2\rfloor$. Gallai's Conjecture was verified for many classes of graphs. In particular, Lovász (1968) verified this conjecture for graphs with at most one vertex of even degree, and Pyber (1996) verified …
The objective of the well-known Towers of Hanoi puzzle is to move a set of disks one at a time from one of a set of pegs to another, while keeping the disks sorted on each peg. We propose an adversarial variation in which the first player forbids a set of states in the puzzle, and the second player must then convert one randomly-selected state to another without passing through forbidden states. Analyzing this version raises the question of the treewidth of Hanoi graphs. We find this number exactly for three-peg puzzles and provide nearly-tight asymptotic bounds for larger numbers of pegs.
We give polynomial-time approximation schemes for monotone maximization problems expressible in terms of distances (up to a fixed upper bound) and efficiently solvable in graphs of bounded treewidth. These schemes apply in all fractionally treewidth-fragile graph classes, a property that is true for many natural graph classes with sublinear separators. We also provide quasipolynomial-time approximation schemes for these problems in all classes with sublinear separators.
We investigate crossing minimization for 1-page and 2-page book drawings. We show that computing the 1-page crossing number is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the number of crossings, that testing 2-page planarity is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to treewidth, and that computing the 2-page crossing number is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the sum of the number of crossings and the treewidth of the input graph. We prove these results via Courcelle's theorem on the fixed-parameter tractability of properties expressible in monadic second order logic for graphs of bou…
We prove that the treewidth of an Erdös-Rényi random graph $\rg{n, m}$ is, with high probability, greater than $βn$ for some constant $β> 0$ if the edge/vertex ratio $\frac{m}{n}$ is greater than 1.073. Our lower bound $\frac{m}{n} > 1.073$ improves the only previously-known lower bound. We also study the treewidth of random graphs under two other random models for large-scale complex networks. In particular, our result on the treewidth of \rigs strengths a previous observation on the average-case behavior of the \textit{gate matrix layout} problem. For scale-free random graphs based on the Ba…
We consider relations between the size, treewidth, and local crossing number (maximum number of crossings per edge) of graphs embedded on topological surfaces. We show that an $n$-vertex graph embedded on a surface of genus $g$ with at most $k$ crossings per edge has treewidth $O(\sqrt{(g+1)(k+1)n})$ and layered treewidth $O((g+1)k)$, and that these bounds are tight up to a constant factor. As a special case, the $k$-planar graphs with $n$ vertices have treewidth $O(\sqrt{(k+1)n})$ and layered treewidth $O(k+1)$, which are tight bounds that improve a previously known $O((k+1)^{3/4}n^{1/2})$ tr…
Twin-width is a newly introduced graph width parameter that aims at generalizing a wide range of "nicely structured" graph classes. In this work, we focus on obtaining good bounds on twin-width $\text{tww}(G)$ for graphs $G$ from a number of classic graph classes. We prove the following: - $\text{tww}(G) \leq 3\cdot 2^{\text{tw}(G)-1}$, where $\text{tw}(G)$ is the treewidth of $G$, - $\text{tww}(G) \leq \max(4\text{bw}(G),\frac{9}{2}\text{bw}(G)-3)$ for a planar graph $G$ with $\text{bw}(G) \geq 2$, where $\text{bw}(G)$ is the branchwidth of $G$, - $\text{tww}(G) \leq 183$ for a planar graph $…
Many hard algorithmic problems dealing with graphs, circuits, formulas and constraints admit polynomial-time upper bounds if the underlying graph has small treewidth. The same problems often encourage reducing the maximal degree of vertices to simplify theoretical arguments or address practical concerns. Such degree reduction can be performed through a sequence of splittings of vertices, resulting in an _expansion_ of the original graph. We observe that the treewidth of a graph may increase dramatically if the splittings are not performed carefully. In this context we address the following nat…
We define a special case of tree decompositions for planar graphs that respect a given embedding of the graph. We study the analogous width of the resulting decomposition we call the embedded-width of a plane graph. We show both upper bounds and lower bounds for the embedded-width of a graph in terms of its treewidth and describe a fixed parameter tractable algorithm to calculate the embedded-width of a plane graph. To do so, we give novel bounds on the size of matchings in planar graphs.
We consider the parameterised complexity of several list problems on graphs, with parameter treewidth or pathwidth. In particular, we show that List Edge Chromatic Number and List Total Chromatic Number are fixed parameter tractable, parameterised by treewidth, whereas List Hamilton Path is W[1]-hard, even parameterised by pathwidth. These results resolve two open questions of Fellows, Fomin, Lokshtanov, Rosamond, Saurabh, Szeider and Thomassen (2011).
We describe a polynomial-time algorithm which, given a graph $G$ with treewidth $t$, approximates the pathwidth of $G$ to within a ratio of $O(t\sqrt{\log t})$. This is the first algorithm to achieve an $f(t)$-approximation for some function $f$. Our approach builds on the following key insight: every graph with large pathwidth has large treewidth or contains a subdivision of a large complete binary tree. Specifically, we show that every graph with pathwidth at least $th+2$ has treewidth at least $t$ or contains a subdivision of a complete binary tree of height $h+1$. The bound $th+2$ is best …
We introduce the graph theoretical parameter of edge treewidth. This parameter occurs in a natural way as the tree-like analogue of cutwidth or, alternatively, as an edge-analogue of treewidth. We study the combinatorial properties of edge-treewidth. We first observe that edge-treewidth does not enjoy any closeness properties under the known partial ordering relations on graphs. We introduce a variant of the topological minor relation, namely, the weak topological minor relation and we prove that edge-treewidth is closed under weak topological minors. Based on this new relation we are able to …
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne（洛桑联邦理工学院）；University of Haifa（海法大学）
Partitioning a graph using graph separators, and particularly clique separators, are well-known techniques to decompose a graph into smaller units which can be treated independently. It was previously known that the treewidth was bounded above by the sum of the size of the separator plus the treewidth of disjoint components, and this was obtained by the heuristic of filling in all edges of the separator making it into a clique. In this paper, we present a new, tighter upper bound on the treewidth of a graph obtained by only partially filling in the edges of a separator. In particular, the meth…
Treewidth is arguably the most important structural graph parameter leading to algorithmically beneficial graph decompositions. Triggered by a strongly growing interest in temporal networks (graphs where edge sets change over time), we discuss fresh algorithmic views on temporal tree decompositions and temporal treewidth. We review and explain some of the recent work together with some encountered pitfalls, and we point out challenges for future research.
A homomorphism from a graph G to a graph H is locally bijective, surjective, or injective if its restriction to the neighborhood of every vertex of G is bijective, surjective, or injective, respectively. We prove that the problems of testing whether a given graph G allows a homomorphism to a given graph H that is locally bijective, surjective, or injective, respectively, are NP-complete, even when G has pathwidth at most 5, 4, or 2, respectively, or when both G and H have maximum degree 3. We complement these hardness results by showing that the three problems are polynomial-time solvable if G…
The Metric Dimension problem asks for a minimum-sized resolving set in a given (unweighted, undirected) graph $G$. Here, a set $S \subseteq V(G)$ is resolving if no two distinct vertices of $G$ have the same distance vector to $S$. The complexity of Metric Dimension in graphs of bounded treewidth remained elusive in the past years. Recently, Bonnet and Purohit [IPEC 2019] showed that the problem is W[1]-hard under treewidth parameterization. In this work, we strengthen their lower bound to show that Metric Dimension is NP-hard in graphs of treewidth 24.
We consider the classical problems (Edge) Steiner Tree and Vertex Steiner Tree after restricting the input to some class of graphs characterized by a small set of forbidden induced subgraphs. We show a dichotomy for the former problem restricted to $(H_1,H_2)$-free graphs and a dichotomy for the latter problem restricted to $H$-free graphs. We find that there exists an infinite family of graphs $H$ such that Vertex Steiner Tree is polynomial-time solvable for $H$-free graphs, whereas there exist only two graphs $H$ for which this holds for Edge Steiner Tree. We also find that Edge Steiner Tree…
We study the notion of local treewidth in sparse random graphs: the maximum treewidth over all $k$-vertex subgraphs of an $n$-vertex graph. When $k$ is not too large, we give nearly tight bounds for this local treewidth parameter; we also derive tight bounds for the local treewidth of noisy trees, trees where every non-edge is added independently with small probability. We apply our upper bounds on the local treewidth to obtain fixed parameter tractable algorithms (on random graphs and noisy trees) for edge-removal problems centered around containing a contagious process evolving over a networ…
The Glauber dynamics on the colourings of a graph is a random process which consists in recolouring at each step a random vertex of a graph with a new colour chosen uniformly at random among the colours not already present in its neighbourhood. It is known that when the total number of colours available is at least $Δ+2$, where $Δ$ is the maximum degree of the graph, this process converges to a uniform distribution on the set of all the colourings. Moreover, a well known conjecture is that the time it takes for the convergence to happen, called the mixing time, is polynomial in the size of the…
Dynamic graph theory is a novel, growing area that deals with graphs that change over time and is of great utility in modelling modern wireless, mobile and dynamic environments. As a graph evolves, possibly arbitrarily, it is challenging to identify the graph properties that can be preserved over time and understand their respective computability. In this paper we are concerned with the treewidth of dynamic graphs. We focus on metatheorems, which allow the generation of a series of results based on general properties of classes of structures. In graph theory two major metatheorems on treewidth…
We prove an approximate max-multiflow min-multicut theorem for bounded treewidth graphs. In particular, we show the following: Given a treewidth-$r$ graph, there exists a (fractional) multicommodity flow of value $f$, and a multicut of capacity $c$ such that $ f \leq c \leq \mathcal{O}(\ln (r+1)) \cdot f$. It is well known that the multiflow-multicut gap on an $r$-vertex (constant degree) expander graph can be $Ω(\ln r)$, and hence our result is tight up to constant factors. Our proof is constructive, and we also obtain a polynomial time $\mathcal{O}(\ln (r+1))$-approximation algorithm for the…
